just yet another mass shooting that we're covering in america. this man, again, for everyone watching, is still on the run. 24-year-old deion patterson. he's considered armed and dangerous. the police in georgia say do not approach him. do not approach him. call 911 instead. they do not know where he is at this time. that is going to do it for me today. "deadline white house" starts right now. hi there, everyone, it's 4:00 in new york. we're going to keep a close eye on the fast-moving situation in atlanta. a gunman there killed one person and injured four others at a medical center earlier today. if and when there are any updates or information you need to know, we'll bring it to you. we begin with brand-new

blockbursts reporting that solves the mystery of the missing link in a story that has rocked american politics and media. for weeks now, a question has loomed over the ouster of top fox host tucker carlson. why did the murdochs fire one of their biggest stars? the architect of a platform that unself-consciously peddles conspiracy theories. why did they fire him based on something that didn't happen on air? what was that missing link? and what if anything did tucker carlson do or say off camera that contributed to the nearly unprecedented 11th hour settlement of $787.5 million in the defamation case brought against fox by dominion voting systems. "the new york times" answers both those questions and reports on the missing text message that it found in some groundbreaking new reporting. the message was reportedly unearthed during the discovery process with dominion. here's how the "times" reports that out. quote, in the message sent to

one of his producers in the hours after violent trump supporters stormed the u.s. capitol on january 6th, 2021, mr. carlson described how he had recently watched a video of a group of men, trump supporters, he said, violently attack, quote, an antifa kid. it was, quote, three against one, he wrote. and then he expressed a sense of dismay that the attackers like him were white. jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously, he wrote. quote, it's not how white men fight, he said. but he said he found himself for a moment wanting the group to kill the person he had destroyed as the antifa kid. here's that part. quote, i found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they would hit him harder, kill him. i really wanted them to hurt the kid. i could taste it, he wrote. quote, then somewhere deep in my

brain an alarm went off. this isn't good for me. i'm becoming something i don't want to be. after all, he wrote, quote, somebody probably loves this kid and would be crushed if he was killed. it was the single thing, the single text message that gave fox executives something they couldn't look away from, right, an undeniable glimpse into a deeply depraved human being who was now their biggest star. it may have ultimately been this nail in the coffin for carlson's career at fox. "times" reports this, quote, the day after the discovery, the board told fox executives it was bringing in an outside law firm to conduct an investigation into mr. carlson's conduct. the text message added to a growing number of internal issues involving mr. carlson that led the company's leadership to conclude he was more of a problem than an asset and had to go. carlson did not comment on the reporting by "the new york times," concerned that the message would be revealed in a

trial with dominion with carlson on the witness stand, was a factor in fox's decision to settle with the voting machine company. the text message that led to the downfall of fox news host tucker carlson is where we begin today with some of our favorite reporters and friends including two of the reporters bilined. "new york times" reporter jeremy peters, and "new york times" washington correspondent mike schmidt is here. we're joined by my colleagues, msnbc host and legal analyst katy fang and msnbc host mety hasan. let me start with you, jeremy. take me through what you and your colleagues have reported. >> well, we knew there had to be a big reason for tucker carlson's firing. fox doesn't just suddenly decide to jettison their most popular primetime host without a good reason. every time they have fired someone so abruptly, think bill o'reilly, roger ailes, there's been a big smoking gun.

and what we tried to pursue -- >> they've come at the end of an investigation. this seems to come at the beginning of one, right? >> exactly. and on the eve of this trial, so you knew -- like if they're paying $787.5 million and firing their biggest host in primetime, something isn't quite adding up. there's more to this story. and so what -- mike and i set out to do over the last week with jim rutenburg is what was that. and it didn't make sense to us that there was -- hr complaints, abby grossburg lawsuit, the toxic workplace. tucker had been a constant management headache. we knew all of this, but there had to have been something really, really big that went on behind the scenes that we just didn't know about. >> and here it is. >> this is it. >> as someone who knows the fox culture, i mean, it is now answerable -- you know, where's the red line.

it is this depraved indifference to violence. >> uh-huh. well, i mean, look, this is like -- he is voicing homicidal rage. let's not -- >> and enthusiasm. >> and enthusiasm for that. it's really striking. and you know, i've seen some commentary here and there that like, oh, we always knew tucker carlson was racist, this isn't surprising. anyone who's watched his show should know he's said stuff like this. no, this is different. this is an explicit acknowledgment of racial superiority. his belief that white people are somehow better and less inclined to behave in a bad and dishonorable manner. he's said a lot of stuff on his show in coded language that echoes the white nationalist philosophy. he's never said anything this explicitly racist. >> there is the -- the stop and think for a second piece. i read the text message when i read the story, when it was

first alerted, and i went back and read it again. mike, it's hard to get through. i mean, take tucker carlson and fox news out of the story, and this is a sick person speaking joyfully and enthusiastically about a desire for people to beat up another person until he dies. tell me about how this landed with the board and how keeping an examination of tucker carlson on the witness stand factored into both the settlement and his firing. >> so the text message set off to, you know, many different important things inside of fox. one of them was that the board, as you were saying, told fox that they were basically going to investigate this -- not basically, they were going to investigate this, they were going to bring out the outside law firm. that created the prospect that as this trial was heading forward and tucker carlson could be called to the stand and might even be asked about this text

message if it became un-redacted, that there would be an ongoing investigation being done by the board into whether their top star was a racist and what the circumstances were behind that. and that put the company in a highly unusual and difficult position where they had to realize there could be an ongoing investigation into carlson. the second thing that the text message did was it raised the issue of what could happen at the trial in a new and different light. and by that, what i'm saying is that tucker carlson was to be called as a witness. and if dominion moved to have the message un-redacted and was able to use it, you would have had this incredibly dramatic and damning moment at the trial where a dominion lawyer was asking tucker carlson to explain

this text message. and that was -- look, fox had taken on an enormous amount of bad press and publicity around this. i think it was starting to wear more and more on the company. and this would have been even -- you know, this would have been even worse in that area. on top of that, there are all these other suits that have been brought against fox in which there will be discovery, and this text message could come out. so the company, top executives did not know about it until the day before the trial started, nor did the board, and they were finding out about this, and it all comes at this time that they're trying to settle the lawsuit. and it lead to this decision to settle it for this extraordinary amount of money. >> i mean, mike, tucker's coverage of kyle rittenhouse is probably his on-air performances that come the closest to rooting for what he articulates in the text.

but i -- i'm going to read it one more time. i want to ask you to expand on what in your reporting crosses the line in this for fox news. let me read it one more time. tucker carlson writes this, on january 7th, couple weeks ago i was watching video of people fighting on the street in washington. a couple of trump guys surrounded an antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. it was three against one at at least. jumpation guy like that is dishonorable obviously, it is not how white men fight. suddenly i found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they would hit him harder, kill him. ireland wanted them to -- i really wanted them to hurt the kid. i could taste it. an alarm went off, this isn't good, i'm becoming something i don't want to be. the antifa creep is a human being as much as i despise what he says and does, much as i'd hate him personally in i knew him. i shouldn't gloat over his suffering. i should be bothered by it. i should remember that somewhere somebody loves this kid and

would be crushed if he was killed. if i don't care about those things, if i reduce people to their politics, how am i better than he is? tell me how reading that in your understanding gave them a piece of information about tucker carlson they didn't have from this program. >> well, so -- i'm not exactly sure about -- look, how much this like -- i'm not exactly sure how much of that is like differentiating between what the board thought about what he said publicly in that, i'm not exactly sure. what i do know is that the idea that this could become public was flight -- frightening for the company because you were going to have a jury at a trial that was going to be able to decide a dollar figure. and they -- fox had underestimated the way that the public was going to react to the initial messages that came out in february. and this was going to make it all the worse with the jury if

they saw this message and it could increase. i look at it, and it's been described this way, what fox did with tucker carlson, as a business decision. they made a business decision to get rid of him. i realize that may not be very satisfying to people that have long thought, you know, that tucker carlson was a racist. but i -- i really think this comes down to business more than anything. >> meti hasan, you have put together the definitive compilation. you've watched hours and hours of tucker carlson so that none of the rest of us have to. let me play what you put together for the purposes of what mike has led us to, this part of the conversation. >> white supremacy, that's the problem. this is a hoax. there's no evidence that white supremacists were responsible for what happened on january 6th. that's a lie. we have a moral obligation to admit the world's poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer and dirtier and more divided. demographics -- demographics --

demographics -- demographics -- remember the great replacement theory was a conspiracy theory. sound more like a fact. ilhan omar has shown the failed immigration system k. a single human being be as loathsome? it's hard to believe. montel williams, you know, is something that's within her range of experience. is she good at it? we can't say. but she's done it. just for maskistic reasons, one more time. so it might be time for joe biden to let us know what ketanji brown jackson's lsat score was. why was she doing the lsats? they think you should be el vaccinated on what you do, not your dna. that's rwanda. rwanda. rwanda. rwanda. rwanda. we're not sure how george floyd died. very few unarmed black men are

killed by white cops these days, where's george floyd when you need him? the only job training program the administration has gotten is to get more black people to is sell more weed in the cities. you never see politicians say malcolm x, why is that? he didn't talk like a sharecropper. xenophobia, seems look antique. there's colorblind equality and against racism. >> i -- i wanted to talk to you today. you've been -- you've had the courage to sort of go toe to toe with him. you've underscored and highlighted what -- it's hard to figure out what is most odious that he broadcast. the thing that's intriguing to me about the message is it's a video he was watching weeks before. so i -- my brain was wondering if it was something from december 19th where we know at

least a couple of of the proud boys weren't allowed to be in washington on the -- we don't know. that isn't known yet. that isn't part of this reporting. but i think it is probably the sad truth that this was a business decision. tell me your reaction to reading these words from tucker carlson and what he thought was a private moment. >> on the one hand you can't not be shocked by this stuff. on the other hand, it is kind of, well, it's not that surprising, it's tucker carlson. and jeremy said a moment ago and first off, hats off to jeremy and mike and jim for this reporting and getting hold of this text. jeremy said a moment ago it didn't add up, so they went to look for the text. after reading the text, it still doesn't add up to me. i half agree and half disagree with what jeremy was saying. in the sense, this is worse than other things, the text, because it is an expression of homicidal rage. on the other hand i wouldn't downplay what he says on his show. i wouldn't say it was all that coded as we played.

he pushed the great replacement theory which is a neo-nazi anti-semitic conspiracy theory. the adl wrote to fox two years ago and said this is anti-semitism, you should get rid of tucker carlson. and murdoch said no, don't believe your eyeing eyes or ears, well is fine. over the past two years he's pushed the great replacement again and again. he's called immigrants people who make this country dirtier, as you saw in the clip. he asked for ketanji brown jackson's lsat scores, never asked for gorsuch's or kavanaugh's. there's plenty he said on air that you wonder was the fox board not watching tucker carlson tonight for the last few years. it's been five years, nicole, since the daily stormer, the neo-nazi website that said tucker carlson is our greatest ally and the daily storm of the tv show. not sure if the fox board were paying attention when they said that five years ago. and if the fox board were worried about the text -- last

night jesse waters, touted as a replacement on live fax air, referred to illegal immigrants, people he can tell are illegal just by looking at them. i've got to ask -- are they waiting for a jesse waters text before they statewide not to give him the 8:00 p.m. slot? i don't think this was the full story yet. i think this is part of the story. but i just can't believe that the fox board decided, oh, wow, this is the line that tucker carlson crossed in terms of his racism and offensiveliness. don't get me started on 1/6 and the conspiracy theories which chris wallace left the network over. don't remember the fox board saying anything then. >> let's talk about that, mehti. the reporting includes a sense that it was the dynamic of a straw breaking a camel's back. it was all these things, it wasn't any win, it was perhaps all of them. i want to bring katie in to find out how two parties negotiate knowing that one of them is desperate to keep this text that the "times" now has reported on and published out of the public

view. but you know, the violence -- i want to play this for you. this is some -- we went back and looked at a lot of it, i'm only going play a smidgeon of it. some of tucker carlson's singular coverage of kyle rittenhouse. >> so we really surprised that looting and an arson accelerated to murder? how shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would? 17-year-old kyle rittenhouse wound up in the street in kenosha in the first place with a gun for one reason -- he was there because in the summer of 2020, the leadership of the democratic party endorsed mob violence for political ends. during the course of our conversation, kyle rittenhouse was bright, sincere, dutiful, and hard working. exactly the kind of person you would want many more of in your country. >> tucker carlson puts rittenhouse on the map who ends up spending time with donald

trump i think at mar-a-lago and at the white house. jeremy, my colleague peter baker once described trump as a match in the powder keg that is america. tucker carlson is the gasoline. every grievance that emanates both the republican party's most animated faction and where it intersects with domestic violent extremism in america if we are to believe the bulletins from the department of homeland security is amplified by this one host. i take your point that that was, you know, done. that was locked in well before any discovery process by dominion commenced. they had access to the platform long before that. what do you -- it's clear that nothing's changed. to your point, the folks trying out for his time slot are trying to outdo tucker. what does that say? >> it says that the problem is not tucker carlson. the problem is fox. the problem are the murdochs. for too long we've focused all

our ire on tucker carlson or sean hannity or judge jeannine or whatever it is. the problem is the institution. it is fox which allows this stuff, which echos this stuff. if you look at the rupert murdoch text, they don't make him look good in his control of this stuff. you mentioned kyle rittenhouse, that should have been the board stopped and said why are we saying there should be more rittenhouses in america? what about kanye west? tucker carlson has west on his show, edits out, nicole, edits out the stuff where he's being anti-semitic and hide it from the viewers, right. we only find out because of leaks. that was a moment where fox, the quote/unquote news organization, should have been held accountable. that's the problem here. i worry that fox is trying to behind the scenes dump it all on tucker and try and look like they acted responsibly, and that's nonsense. >> yeah, i mean, mike, was there any sense that, you know, maria bartiromo or any of the others

could be salvaged if they cut off the cancerous part of the anchor team? there's this element of defiance. the other part of the discovery process yields defiance of rupert murdoch. he wants laura and sean and tucker to join hands and kumbaya say joe biden is president. they don't do anything of the things he wants them to. take us inside what the reaction was to what they were learning maybe for the first time that these anchors were saying about them. they called a female executive the "c" word. it was a very ugly picture of -- i don't know if insubordination captures it. >> yeah. i think that the february text began to build an even larger sort of set of issues for tucker. and these were the texts that came out as part of the litigation that were public. and they showed, you know, someone saying, you know, bad things about his bosses. he -- you know, and making remarks that internally, you know, created problems for him.

and you know, would this text in and of itself if it had been found by itself, what would fox have done? you know, i don't know. but it added to this larger set of issues that they had with him and really, you know, basically put fox in the position where they were going to have to contend with this investigation, you know, into him. you know, what does that mean for other hosts and stuff like that? you know, i don't know. look, they fired lou dobbs sometime after the election. i don't know what they're going to do about maria bartiromo and, you know, there were certainly internally discussions about how she had created a lot of the problems for them around the lawsuit. but i mean, i think that part of the reporting on this and the challenge and the fact -- one of the reasons we sought out, you know, documentation in this is that fox is not obviously the most transparent place on the face of the earth. it's a place that's run by a

family, and it is -- it doesn't operate like many normal companies or institutions at all. so that makes reporting on it all the more difficult. and it does not have a lot of good standing in the general public and certainly with the media. so when it makes a decision and does something, people struggle to take any of it at face value given its past actions. >> such a good point. i want to bring in katy fang on all of the legal questions, whether this could be damaging and -- mike mentioned the shareholder suits. i have to sneak in a short break. when we come back, we'll hear from katie and have more on how tucker carlson's depraved world view could have been a liability and may still be for fox news. plus, three-term democratic congressman from texas colin allred telling voters this morning ted cruz only cares about himself, announcing his run for ted cruz's senate seat.

currently held by the insurrection-supporting senator. we'll talk about that later in the show. and later in the broadcast, as the ex-president continues to press ahead with what could be a very real run for the white house again despite multiple criminal investigation into him, a credible accusation of rape in new york is being treated again in some corners as just another candidate for office heading to iowa. we'll bring you those stories and more after a break. d more ak at t-mobile, your business will save over $1000.

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katie, take me inside the legal significance of this text message. >> thank you for that. i want to set the table again and turn back the hands of time a tiny bit. i want to remind our viewers about the fact that the dominion and fox litigation obviously had a history prior to the date that it settled. there was a time when dominion moved the judge in this case to basically tell fox that you had done too many redactions, and the judge agreed. and the judge ordered fox to basically unredact a very large portion of the evidence in the exhibits that had been filed. that big dump of information that happened in february/beginning of march predated the summary judgment order that was entered that was particularly damning against fox revealed so much about what was going on internally at fox. interestingly, "the new york times" is continuing to push this court for further redactions. there's a pending motion that has no disposition in front of the same judge that's basically

saying we need to know, america, the public needs to know what is going on behind the redactions that fox so desperately wanted to make sure that they wanted those redactions to stay in place so no one knew what was going on. what's interesting is this particular text from tucker cal son it a producer -- and listen, this may be an unpopular take. there is the possibility that this text message may have never seen the light of day. why? well, because the discovery process, in discovery when you send a discovery request or serve a subpoena, it's broadly construed. it allows the lawyers for the other side to make a determination as to whether or not it's, quote, relevant to the request. if you see redactions, if i'm dominion lawyers and see this plethora of redaction, of course i'm going to go to the court and say i believe there's relevant information that needs to be turned over. the court does a review, within the chambers the court reviews those redactions and decides whether or not they'll be released and made public.

there's a possibility that this particular text may have been irrelevant to the dominion litigation. >> katie -- >> there's a possibility the court may have said this doesn't speak to what was going on with the defamation to dominion, so we may never have seen this. but to the question you posed prior to the break, whether this is still relevant to other litigation, absolutely. these are huge red flags for the other plaintiffs to pursue. >> well, katie, there's something in mike and jeremy's story today, as well as the last reporting by the existence of the text message, that these were messages and content not flagged to anyone on the board. what does that say about the legal team? i mean, it -- it seems like maybe they were in your sort of description myopically focused on what would be permitted by this judge. but it seems like a lawyer for fox news, being sued for $1.6 billion for defamation, that

turns around election lies would have been particularly attuned to the things that tucker carlson was saying in private messages. >> i think the generous interpretation would be that maybe there was a break dmoin -- breakdown in communication. when you couple what we're hearing now and the reporting we're hearing with what we've learned from abby grossberg, again, giving her benefit of the doubt of what she's told us, nicole, the legal team for fox news prevented her from being able to review her deposition transcripts. did not consult with her or allow her to tell the truth. if you look at what's going on now, there was some serious incompetence that was being committed by fox's legal team. there is -- if you're going to be producing this much discovery, then you better be ready to handle it. and i find it hard to believe that fox news with all of its money didn't have the appropriate white glove, white shoe law firm to be able to handle this. i will also throw into the mix for the possibility as to why this pushed a settlement in this

case the following -- jeremy was in the courtroom with me, as well. we saw that final kind of jury that -- the composition of the jury, and i've told anybody who will listen that that injury ended up being part of the reason why that case settled. that jury was primarily composed of minorities. that was not a fox-friendly jury. if you know that you have these types of violent and racially charged text messages of which i believe this is the tip of the iceberg, i firmly believe this is not the last that we're going to hear about text messages that are promoting violence and promoting racism coming from tucker carlson and others, if you know that this is the tip of the iceberg, of course you're going to want to settle to prevent it from happening. foolishly, you're highlighting this for other litigants. as for people like maria bartiromo, in light of the abby grossberg situation, don't her to be terminated any time soon. they're not going to poke that bear and invite drama from mar

eye bartiromo by terminating her. >> tip of the iceberg? are there more? >> well, as we were talking about the "times" is seeking through the judge to have the messages un-redacted and more of it made public. that, i assume, will take many days if not weeks, if think longer. i don't think that will be a quick process. my guess is that fox will make its own argument in the course of it. but you know, when i sort of step back from all of this and look at this, you have to look at this in the totality of the damage that the dominion suit did to fox. it cost it over $700 million. it created starting in february with the disclosure of the text messages that did come out, very, very bad publicity for the company publicly, and created internal issues and finger pointing about what people were saying about each other in

private messages. and it's led to the disclosure of this message. we would not have seen this message if the dominion suit had never been brought or because it had to be produced in the discovery. and because of that, it came into the mix in the litigation and was included in documents and was ultimately, you know, available to the point that we were able to see it. none of that happens without the dominion suit. so when the history of the dominion suit is written, you know, we know about this text message today because that suit was brought. >> and mehti, i'm still saying katie phang's astute objectsization that it was not a fox-friendly jury. it was an american jury. it looked like america. what does that say about fox? >> it's a good point. what does that say about fox? it says about fox that sadly we're not going to see anything changing on fox.

my worry now is that -- i mentioned jesse waters and what he was saying yesterday, and he might be the replacement for tucker. whoever the replacement for tucker carlson is at 8:00, i don't think they're going to dial this stuff down. they're probably going to dial it up. look at the ratings disaster that they've had the past -- you've got people fleeing fox at 8:00 because their base loves this stuff. their base loves the kind of stuff that tirk says on air and -- tucker says on her and going to newsmax or whatever it is. that means we're in for a ride where stuff is not going to get better any time soon. mike mentioned the history of the dominion suit. the history of american politics in this era, in this period when it was written, when it's written fox will loom large. and i said for a long time all roads lead back to fox. even now we're discovering kevin mccarthy's speakership was apparently reportedly according to abby grossberg, negotiated with tucker carlson, the terms of it. all roads especially on the road lead back to fox. we have to understand the damage it has done to our public life, to race relations, to minority

communities, to democracy in america. >> great replacement there quoted in the manifestos of at least -- mass shooter in el paso and the alleged moose shooter at the tree of life synagogue. it is a dangerous idealogy, and that's not hyperbole. jeremy, i'm going to give you the last word. to mike's point -- and katie's and mehti's, we know this because of the legal work that fox paid pretty pennies to. did they fire their lawyers? >> it did once botch a year ago they fire -- about a year ago they fired their legal team. katie raises a great point. there's really no good reason that the board and senior executives at the company did not know about this text message. and tucker, we know from our reporting, was asked about this in his deposition. so it's not like it was just sitting there in a pile of redacted documents that you had

to comb through thousands and thousands of pages to see. he was asked about it. lawyers knew -- from both sides. and you know, when i started hearing about this text, the ebbs since of it a while -- existence of it a while ago, you knew it was bad, but if i was hearing about it, why weren't the executives at fox hearing about it? and it is really a question of -- time after time after time in this case fox's legal counsel led the murdochs to believe they were not as exposed as they were. if we lose it in delaware, don't worry, we can appeal, we can take it to the supreme court, and we'll win. don't worry that -- you know, you're not going to have as much of your emails and text messages out there as ended up being out there. and not just that, it wasn't just like the fox.com emails, dominion was able to get the personal cell phones, emails of rupert and lockland, and that's

what fox's legal team didn't prepare them for and why i think the lawyers in this case, not just the ones that fox hired externally, but the ones internally have a lot to answer for. >> and they're the same lawyers representing them in the shareholder lawsuits and the smartmatic case? >> there's a lot of lawyers. >> there's a lot of lawyers. i'm beginning to understand why. jeremy, mike, jim, important scoop, important piece of reporting in filling in something that mehti covers better than just about anyone, the picture behind the scenes at fox news. and katie, for making sense of it for us. thank you. katie returns in the next hour. thank you all for starting us off. after the break, paging ted cruz. get used to this person -- congressman collin allred announcing he will challenge ted cruz for his senate seat. part of his pitch, the incumbent's unlike ability and actions surrounding january 6. s.

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i remember hearing the glass breaking and the shouts coming closer. i texted my wife, whatever happens, i love you. then i took off my jacket and got ready to take on anyone who came through that door. ted cruz, he cheered on the mob. >> we will not go quietly into the night! >> then hid in a supply closet when they stormed the capitol. but that's ted for you. all hat, no cattle. >> tag line there. joining our coverage, former congresswoman donna edwards and tim miller, writer at large for "the bulwark." both msnbc contributors. tim, you did a fantastic interview with the congressman. let me play some of this. >> you come to the nfl locker room and you go at lunchtime, you'll see the countriest boy sitting next to the guy from the middle of the city who are like best friends and who are, you know, going to -- who are working hard together and feel like they're brothers.

and so i -- i've seen these divides be bridged. and -- you have to be inclusive, and you have to give folks some buy-in. i have said in particular these are pro-democracy folks who -- i think the biggest divide in their politics right now isn't so much when democrats and republicans, it's between folks who believe in our democracy and those who don't. >> i mean, tim, this is like -- it is one of the most important messages, and he's one of the best messengers on this front. tell me your reaction to his announcement. >> yeah, i was hoping he was going to run. we interviewed him on the podcast about a month ago, and i thought it was interesting to -- that he was considering running. his background is so unique. he's an nfl player. he actually didn't get drafted and then decided to try to get into the nfl even though he also got into law school. i mean, this is a pretty talented guy.

so putting the merits aside, the type of person you would want in the senate. and when i talked to him, he seems like somebody who is very down to earth and good natured and wanted to try to reach out to republicans. that's what you're going to have to do in texas. that's what you're going to have to do. i like the contrast that he's offering with cruz who's a full-time podcaster and internet troll and occasional senator. one thing he said was he said sometimes in texas we feel like we have one senator, john cornyn, because ted cruz doesn't show up. he's too busy, you know, going on ben shapiro's podcast and tweeting. and i think that that's a good contrast for allred. and you know, look, this is a state if you look at 16, trump won by nine. then by five. now in 2024. the direction is moving this way. allred has got to, you see that a little bit in the video, to focus on people voting for george w. bush and rick perry and bringing them across the

line. beto did a great job of turning out the turnout but it wasn't enough. now you've got to win the crossover voters. he seems like the type of guy that could do it. i think this is more realistic than some efforts we've seen from democrats in red states. >> i mean, beto only lost by two points in 2018. there were a lot of former bush people watching the district sort of -- the precincts around houston and dallas come in and thought that beto might do it. so to tim's point, to his many brilliant points, we'll deal with ted cruz in a minute. i want to talk about allred. i want to show you more of his ad. >> my boys are fifth generation texans. they'll learn that this state is full of generous people who look out for each other. where if you work hard and play by the rules, you can get ahead. that's how a working class kid raised by a single mom can make it to the nfl, law school, and even congress.

you don't have to be embarrassed by our senator. we can get a new one. some people say a democrat can't win in texas. well, someone like me was never supposed to get this far. i've taken down a lot of stuff about ted cruz. let's get on the field and find out. i'm colin allred, and i'm running for senate. >> donna, he's so good and so strong. ted cruz is the most loathed person in the republican party. i'm not in it anymore, but when i was there was no one thought to be a bigger weenie than ted cruz. he is loathed all across the ideological spectrum. tell me how you see this race shaping up. >> well, if you look at ted cruz's poll numbers, he really is kind of under water with republicans, although still strong. but where i think colin allred does really great -- and democrats have not always been great at picking candidates that is a right fit for the state or district, but colin allred is

that. he won first when he came into congress in a district that was represented by pete sessions, a republican, for over 20 years. and he defeated him. he appeals to independent voters. he runs in the suburbs, so he understand suburban voters. i think he has exactly the right kind of profile that is going to be important to put forward in this year challenging ted cruz. and i love that his video starts out with january 6th and shows that contrast, and also sort of ticks down the line of the things where ted cruz is on the opposite extreme end of the spectrum. and colin allred offers a really sort of center that is a uniquely texan approach to politics. >> i want to do the other side of this. we've talked about the unique strength. i want to push a little more on cruz's unique weaknesses.

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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ get 2.9% apr for 36 months plus $1,500 purchase allowance on an xt5 and xt6 when you finance through cadillac financial. ♪ we're back with donna and tim. so ted cruz is so beatable, so defeatable. let's deal with january 6. so he describes january 6 as a domestic terror attack and they goes on tucker carlson, who has been fired, as we learned, for essentially articulating

homicidal rage. he goes on with tucker carlson and recants. this is i would have to imagine a politician vulnerable in any state, including texas. tell me how his recent antics, also as his state of literally freezing to death, off in mexico, he's been a terrible senator for the people of texas. >> if it was a slightly less red state, he would be a senator anymore. he's on the same ballot as greg abbott. abbott got 500,000 more votes. cruz only wins by two points. this shows he's just that unpopular, right? it wasn't even about the policies, it's about people don't like ted cruz, they like

beto. now we've done cancun, the fact that he's obsessed with his podcast and not actually a senator, just how embarrassing and sniveling he's been, cozying up to trump and his wife. the podcast on democracy and on police. how about this for a contrast. a football player who is with the police, who is for law and order versus a guy who got police killed while he was hiding in a broom closet. i think if that is a contrast that allred continues to drive, i think it's a winner and cruz is super vulnerable because all of this has happened since he barely eked out a win in 2018. >> i think with republicans on the other side of the 85% of americans with abortion and gun safety, every republican is

vulnerable. but, donna, what tim is saying makes me want to adjust that to every republican is vulnerable had faced with a talented democrat and that's what allred is, a very talented and authentic politician. >> i think that's right. one of the things that's really different from 2018 with that huge voter turnover for beto in 2018 is abortion politics have changed and they've particularly changed in texas. and i think it puts ted cruz in a very vulnerable spot. and then of course you had uvalde. again, it has a great contrast from allred to ted cruz. this guy was beatable in 2018 and i think he's beatable now. people don't like ted cruz. he's not a likable guy and he's cynical and hypocritical. i think the contrast with allred

is going to work to allred's advantage in this race. >> it's such a good point, tim, about ground zero for the most unpopular abortion bans is texas with its vigilante feature, as well as the uvalde families and how they've been treated by republican politicians there. >> yeah. and hopefully speaking of democratic politician strength because can you get in trouble on this. beto didn't do as well on his second race. he got a little too far out over his scores. you can focus on abortion and be with that 85%. you talk about a ban on guns, everyone's for that, background checks, everyone's for that. imposing bounties on women who have abortions at six weeks? these deeply unpopular issues. allred, his district is george bush's current district. so i don't know who laura bush

is going to vote for. but think about that kind of republican, a laura bush type of republican. are they going to be for a collin allred or someone for a five-week abortion ban. >> i do not speak for any of the bushes anymore but it is a provocative point to pause on today. thank you very much for spending time with us today. still ahead around here, the dangers of treating a disgraced, twice impeached, once indicted vice president like any other guy heading to iowa. we'll have that next. g to iowa. we'll have that next no more secretly renting the attic to that scary lodger that i met at the reservoir. - we're not rich... i used kayak to compare hundreds of travel sites to get a great deal on our flight, car, and hotel. (loud rustling and clanking from the attic) - who goes to the reservoir?! - kayak. search one and done.

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i'm sure they're going do their due diligence and have some kind of plan about fact chamber of commercing. it's not just kaitlan collins talking to him. it's an incredible gift to trump. because he's back on fox news after a soft ban and every time trump would pick on desantis, mark levin would say this isn't helpful, they'd tweet about it. they've all come back around, given in and they're going to give him regular air on fox and this idea that he's going to be on cnn, obviously the most important thing that it's going to be a huge advantage for trump. >> hi again, everyone. it's 5:00 in new york in 2023. here we go again, treating donald trump like a normal politician, not the inciter of an insurrection against our

government, the taker of classified information to his pretty residence, the ally to dictators all across the globe that he actually is. as donald trump kareens into the 2024 election season indicted under criminal investigation by the d.o.j. in fulton county, georgia, accused of rape in new york, he's lapping up the red carpet as the leading republican candidate in early primary states. it's incumbent on us to ask is it really two sides -- airwaves have open up giving him the legitimacy and air time he craves. he's already said he won't take part in the debates. he continues to attack anyone and everyone who he thinks wronged him or might in the

future. that includes judges simply upholding the rule of law and witnesses who have been subpoenaed to testify in cases against him. now, while the republican party he leads is all too happy to lay down again, follow him down the path of autocracy, transforming the gop into a party that stands on the other side of democratic forms, as well as a majority of americans' opinions on gun safety, voting rights and health care. republicans and state legislatures have taken pages from trump's tyrannical play book, silencing and expelling lawmakers they disagree with. so those asking as we gear up to the next presidential season, will it be 2016 all over again. it's clear this time it's not

because we know who he is, we know what kind of president donald trump is. we know he stops at nothing to cling to power. we know he will weaponize the federal government and institutions he leads to his open benefit. we know all this. he'll try and sabotage and destroy his own government, even his own gp. and we know the gop is fine with it and follow him down this path of anti-democratic ways. democracy on trial for all of us is where we begin the hour with some of our favorite reporters and friends. a.b. stoddard, and morgan state university journalism and politics professor jason johnson joins us. neil, i start with you. i'll speak for myself. some of us are ready to acknowledge that it is not the role of the rule of law in democracy to deal with an out of

control politician. it's the role of the heart to police them. when the republican party broke down and donald trump saw good people on both sides of the kkk gathering, i think it became clear that the party didn't have the back bone and the appetite to take him on. i think the pressure built on mueller for two years and it has built for the last two year on merrick garland. do you think there's any chance that the rule of law in america will restrain donald trump? >> i do. so i think that the pressure now because of the failure, as you say, of the republican party to police itself against a demagogue and mueller to do the same is now it's falling on the courts in, he's been indicted in new york and there are certainly others coming and it seems like

jack smith is running an aggressive investigation nearing its final phases, but at least for now, as you pointed out at the beginning, the media seems complicit in giving him a platform. look, i believe very much in debate and the clash of ideas and i want to hear a speech from the other side and those with whom we disagree. it's truly what makes this you to quote taylor swift on tiktok, this is not your father's republican party in is a guy who has been indicted already, who has stolen sensitive documents and kept them and ordered an insurrection on january 6th and in a span of one month, they're going to flip from covering the arraignment of donald trump to giving this guy a town hall.

>> to neal's point, here's what he has to say. this is his first campaign speech in waco. where do you sit in the united states government? nancy pelosi, schumer, biden. >> so what he says there. we have some bad audio on the feed. that was his first campaign event, it was in wake owe, on purpose. "quote, our biggest threat are high level politicians that work in the u.s. government, mitch mcconnell, nancy pelosi, chuck schumer, justice department. for those who have been wronged and betrayed of which will are many out there that have been wronged and betrayed, i am your retribution. i will take care of it." it's like running for seventh

grade class president and running to lead the mob, the neighborhood mafia chapter. to his -- i don't know if we could even call it credit -- but he doesn't use secrets for what he wants to use these platforms to communicate. >> absolutely. what's been so remarkable, as we watch ron desantis, who is supposed to be the viable alternative to trump, the person who can take him down and the heart throb of all the donors and still will not tell us he cannot be president again. they just say things like he cannot win. they never tell us that he shouldn't be president again. so as you've seen that dream of a trump replacement falter, they've been silent as he said things like i'll be your retribution. and he has embraced the january 6th event, the cause of the

prisoners playing this bizarre song that they're making money off of his event and he's going to pardon all of them if he gets elected, he's made it clear. it's part of his sales pitch in this campaign and the republicans are silent on it. they're the gatekeepers. it was up to mitch mcconnell to help convict him on february 13th on 2021 to end this threat to the constitutional order and they did not. then they started to say things like "trump can't win." and now he's back on fox news and it's normalized. health insurance so what's so

threatening, he will stay the same and escalate his lies. kaitlan collins -- management's decision to put him in a town hall where he will lie puts a tremendous burden on her, which she may meet, to fact check him the entire time. and if not, that is a giveaway to donald trump and a gift to donald trump, normalizing him, not only now on fox but on cnn as just another candidate who is not putin's puppet, who did not threaten the peaceful transfer of power, who did not lie to us while this disease spread through our society and killed hundreds of thousands of people

before they came clean about it. he almost won that election, nicole, in 2020 by 44,000 votes in only a few states. so i think it's time for people to sober up about the threat that he continues to present. >> a.b., let me just say savannah guthrie did that same heroic journalistic task of fact checking everything when nbc had a town hall with donald trump in 2020. but it is an undue burden on anyone. that's really not the point. it's a bigger conversation about how you cover someone whose embrace of violence was made abundantly clear through hearings. quote, he won't tell them to stop because he agrees with them. what did they want do? they wanted to hang mike pence.

he agreed with them. until they turn themselves around in open waters, it doesn't matter how many times you fact check him. he's not a normal politician. he's a would-be, you know, coup plotter because of frank live frankly his incompetence. and those insurrectionists' mission that day was to, quote, hang mike pence. >> and we never had any evidence that he was remorseful about that. we have not heard from top republicans saying this is a president we want supported who sicked the mob who wanted to can i go mike pence after his own vieft in a threatening tweet. they will not say, nicole, that

he has disqualified himself as of january 6th, republicans, elected and elites. they will not say that he lost the election. and the republican national committee, as you well know, will break the rules for him. he doesn't have to debate if he doesn't want to, he doesn't have to sign a pledge if he doesn't want to. yes, the challenge for the media is to try to cover this man where republican officials themselves will hold him to no account and provide a long runway in which he can dominate and play by no rules and skirt his way to the nomination without challenge. >> so, jason, we also are that country that's looking around for something else. it's like the alarm's going off in your apartment and you're

like someone else will deal with it. no one else is coming to deal with trump, right? no one else is coming. he's about to be sort of granted the cloak of legitimacy. i'm sure this won'ting the last and i take him at his word that jack smith and others may hold him accountable. may or may not happen. in my view, it doesn't seem to be on any schedule to happen ahead of election. my question for you is how do you democrats adjust to the new reality that it is on them to simply beat donald trump and all of his enablers in elections? >> well, the first part is the democrats have to recognize that they're actually in war, right? this is -- it's the old untouchables thing, they come with a knife, you got to come with a gun. they come with a gun, you got to come with a cannon.

this is not a two-party system. i have said this hundreds of times with you. it is a dime there the democrats have to stop functioning as if they are working with or trying to compete against another party. the republicans have bought the supreme court, the republicans have said that they explicitly do not care about using violence to influence elections, the republicans have consistently passed laws to make it difficult for people to vote. so democrats have to recognize any -- they need a war time consigliery to get through this. >> that's step one say we're going to war against bigotry, fascism, against the guy who tried to overthrow your country. i don't believe the rule of law is going do anything. i don't think it's going to do anything fast enough. if it was going to operate fast

enough, it would have stopped people part of the coup attempt to getting and so the democratic party has to function as if they are responsible for governing, for keeping this country safe and they're responsible for putting down an ongoing coupe and until they do that and republicans stop believing that they're going to rein donald trump in, and they're not, we will continue to slowly ebb towards an autocracy. that's not something any of us want to live in but i think the democrats are in a unique position do something if they recognize the situation they're in. >> the language of war. let me show you what liz cheney had to say about her own party now. >> the reality that we face today as republicans, as we think about the choice in front of us, we have to choose because

republicans cannot both be are ladies and gentlemen, we stand at the edge of an abyss and we must pull back. >> for speaking the truth of about her own party, she was first ousted from leadership and then she served on the january 6th committee and matt gates, among others, orchestrated her ouster from her seat in congress. that is the truth for one of the most conservative republicans i've ever known in my past life in republican politician. how does that inform and animate everybody else? obviously it's fallen on deaf ears but it had some impact on voters and i would hope some impact on hollosy makers. >> so and the republican party

so far hasn't listened to her and haven't made the right ones. and jason and the war going to fascism and extremism like it is, to me there's a tell in donald trump. he's a guy who is like, for example, as the news today shows, he's afraid to debate in his own party. and, you know, a debate involves, the exchange of ideas so it's not surprising that trump is afraid to debate because the only thing trump exchanges in is he reminds me of those kind of college kids who are so afraid to dethey disagree, they want to hide in their own bubble. that's really donald trump at his core.

it's okay if you're a college kid. it's not okay if you're going to be president of the united states. he wants to be a leader of the free world. so i do think the kind of things jason's talking about and calling hum and it's not unfortunately happened to the extent it should. >> jason, i'll give you the last word. what is your advice? >> you have to recognize that we're in war and you can't believe in republicans anymore. i literally thought about this just like a couple days ago. imagine a football team. if you had a football team where the quarterback, like, sold the play book to another team, sexual assaulted somebody and tried to use a gun to win a game. that team with fire the quarterback. we would assume that would happen. we have higher standards for an nfl team than we do for the

republican party. because donald trump has done all of those we have to stop pretending that republicans are anything other than terrorists. it's not hyperbole at this particular point. they endorse terrorism. so the moment we start functioning that way, we might be able to save this country. and that's the only answer at this point. not arguing about the debt ceiling, not arguing can you get matt gates, this, that and the other. recognize you're at war. when the democrats do that, we might scape out some semblance of democracy in a couple years. but i'm not banking on it. >> this conversation is to be continued. thank you so much for having it with me and starting us out today. when we come back, what to make of moscow's provocative yet unverifiable claim that it

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there is a major development to tell you about today that could fundamentally alter the direction in russia's brutal war against ukraine. u.s. officials are looking into russia's unverified claim that ukraine attempted to assassinate president vladimir putin overnight in a drone strike on the kremlin. according to russia, the kremlin's defense systems destroyed two drones over putin's residence in moscow causing an explosion of some sort, as you can see on the video on your screen right now. putin was not home at the time of the attack. president zelenskyy denying the tack explicitly saying when he was on a visit to finland, quote, we don't attack putin or moscow, we fight on our territory, unquote. now officials are on edge about

the kremlin's claims, given the claim comes day before a victory parade at red square, potentially giving putin permission to justify further acts against ukraine. joining us is barry mccaffrey and retired u.s. army colonel, alexander vinman, foreign director for the national security. director -- colonel pitman, what do you think happened here? it feels like we've been talking about putin for so long? i want to say it feels like false flag text. i don't know that for sure. what is your analysis? >> i don't think it's a false flag. i don't think at pretext for russia to escalate.

frankly, russia has no place to escalate to. it's not saving some secret weapon. it's really out of capability. the reason that people think about false flag is russia is constantly lying about all different sorts of things. there's evidence that putin came to power on a bunch of bombings in moscow and used that to rally around the flag effect to get the population behind him and demonstrate he was the one to take the country forward. this was all the way back in 2000. in reality, if you follow the lomgic logic of who stands to benefit, it's not russia. it shows an enormous amount of weakness. what's striking about this visual is in the foreground you

have the mayday parade. putin made this an annual celebration of russian power. you don't have that kind of stark contrast to an outright attack on the kremlin to showcase a weakness. so to me this is potentially ukrainian special services, opposition groups. i think those are much more likely than a russian false flag attack. either way it's quite embarrassing for putin, for russia and probably going to draw russian air defenses to secure. >> general mccaffrey, how do you have see it? >> well, i think we don't know who carried out this operation. it's semi comical. it's unlikely to have been in any way an assassination attempt on mr. putin. he would have needed to be

standing on the head of the kremlin bare headed to be a likely target. he usually is out of moscow protected by security people in his own daca fortress. it's almost 500 miles kyiv to moscow. it doesn't look like it would have been fired outside of russian territory. so the only thing we are sure of, this was not a zelenskyy attempt to assassinate putin. it makes no sense, puts him at greater risk. what we should be concerned about now is the potential for escalation. the russians are categorizing it as an assassination teams so we're on the edge of a desperate putin thrashing around.

his military has failed him. he's an economic pariah. he is abhorred by the international community in general and he's out of options as colonel vinderman suggests. >> this is former russian president medvedev's statement. "after today's terrorist attack, there are no options left except for the physical elimination of zelenskyy and his clique. he's not even needed to sign an act of surrender. i believe rhetorically that represents an attack by the russians. >> it's interesting he's turned out to be an uber hawk and frankly some of his rhetoric is comical. the russians have attempted to assassinate president zelenskyy and his family before. there will likely be some sort of retaliation against kyiv,

against ukraine, to demonstrate russia is not going to take it lying down. but in fact, they don't really have much capability. i think as general mccaffrey mentioned putin doesn't live there. the ukrainians know that. they know exactly where putin is in general because it's not hard to spot a miles-long convoy moving throughout the city to get to the kremlin or get to his dacha on the outskirts. so it was not an assassination attempt but clearly the what the u.s. intelligence role in all of this? >> we're keeping a pretty close eye on the russians. their tape abilities were trying to tutor the ukrainian senior military in what they might see coming. by the way, in the background of all of this is the drama of the

coming ukrainian offensive. essentially there are now nine armored brigades that ukraine has pulled out of combat, they've been reequipped with modern equipment, they've been trained and they're ready to go. probably you see an offensive sometimes and the russians are terrified of this. i don't know whether the ukrainians can pull this off but the russians are correct to be extremely concerned. will they see their combat forces unravel sometime this summer? the ukrainians have tremendous high morale, though they also economically have been devastated. the civilians have become the primary target of russian strategic task forces. they've got to end this war. a lot riding on ukrainian armed

forces. i have been banging away on the biden administration for not providing all right offensive weapons. we've got to give the ukrainians the and crimea specifically. >> all right. we'll stay on that part of the story as well. general barry mccaffrey and lieutenant general alexander vinman, thank you so much for joining us today. >> and the latest from the trial's sixth day after a quick break. xth day after a quick break.

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but trump lawyer joe tacopina is wrong to take anything out of why she did not scream or call the police. and the psychologist talked about how trauma can alter how someone respond. she said that screaming during rape would be an response, it is the last thing that is likely to occur. molly, take me inside. i understand just before we came on that the access hollywood tape was played today. tell me if there was any reaction or your sense of how the day's evidence was presented. >> reporter: we had a pretty jam

packed day. the third woman the jury has heard allegations to testify against -- allegations against trump. they did play the infamous "access hollywood" tape in the last hour. we were trying to get a good look at the jurors' faces. some of them were expressionless. two of them in the back row appeared to be concentrating very closely on it and they all had a transcript of what trump was saying during that video. this was played toward the end after she told viewers about interviewing donald trump in mar-a-lago in 2005 where she alleged that he led her to an unoccupied room in mar-a-lago and cornered her and forced himself on her and said he kept trying to kiss her as she pushed him back and she ultimately decided to stay silent, telling her direct supervisor at work,

and not running it up the chain out of fear the story would get killed. shortly after the "access hollywood" tape was release, it was that point of her testimony that the jurors watched the video. it was hard to gauge exactly how they felt about it. we certainly saw a few shocked faces. >> katie, there are two patterns that have clearly been presented to this. it begins with unwanted kissing. it's escalating in the testimony of the women that have testified. and then it's described by trump, right? i can't help myself, i just can't stop kissing. they let you grab them in the p, they just let you do it. how impactful do you think that will be with the jury? >> you raise a critical point, which is the jury would otherwise not hear it but for

the judge in this case allowing them to testify. otherwise it would just be e. jean carroll's recitation of what happened to her and donald trump's own words on the tape. but to hear the pattern and that is exactly the word that e. jean's lawyers will be focusing upon, a comment and practice by donald trump. today under oath natasha testifies in front of a jury that he led her into a room, the door closed behind and he shoved her against the wall and began to kiss her without her consent. that's exactly how e. jean carroll said what happened to her in that dressing room. and we have officially heard from the defense team of trump that there will be no defense put forward by trump.

there is no testimony from donald trump himself, no expert in psychiatry that was originally supposed to be called. and there will be the closing of the case. i'm not going to put any kind of stake into this but there is a motion called a directed verdict that e. jean carroll's lawyers can move for at the close of their case in chief and at the close of the defense's case. they literally have to get up and say i rest my case, they being trump's defense team and they can say, your honor, as the moving party right now, if you view the evidence in the light most favorable to donald trump, the jury could never be inconsistent with the evidence in this case, you and you should issue a directed verdict. there's a possibility the judge will do it.

i don't think you're going to see that happen in the case because he'd be taking the case away from the members of the jury but it's also a possibility. >> we like to know what is possible on the legal front around here. molly, can you tell me the testimony about the trauma specialist. a couple days ago when tacopina was trying to -- it was almost a strong man argument, that she hasn't screamed, she hadn't called the police, talk about what the trauma specialist was able to fill in for the jury. >> so what leslie liebovitz who had started yesterday but spent most of her testimony happened this morning and up until this afternoon, she talked about how it is, you know, quite common for victims of sexual assault and sexual violence and she mentioned even service members dealing with unresolved trauma, how it can be very common to remember visceral details about an event, you know, what

happened in the actual moment and forget broader details like how they left at the end of the day, how they got there, the time, the location. and she also talked a little bit about how the kind of flood of stress hormones somebody experiences in a moment like this can cloud their judgment, kind of interfeern with their natural instinct like to scream or to and tacopina could ask her why she didn't scream. and that's quite common for victims of sexual assault and victims of all different crimes. >> thank you again for making sense of a really important and difficult story.

thank you to both of you. when we come back, we'll be joined by montana lawmaker zoey zefr. she was banished for fighting for trans rights against a republican party hell bent on taking them away. ty hell bent o taking them away uild up the sho, save for college and our retirement. but we got there, thanks to our advisor and vanguard. now i see who all that hard work was for... it was always for you. seeing you carry on our legacy— i'm so proud. at vanguard, you're more than just an investor, you're an owner. setting up the future for the ones you love. that's the value of ownership. (water splashing) hey, dad... hum... what's the ocean like? uh... you were made to remember some days forever. we were made to help you find the best way there. your yard is your sanctuary. where you should feel free.

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>> zephyr. she spoke in opposition to a trans bill about the harm that these laws cause and warning her fellow lawmakers that if they proceed, they would, quote, have blood on her hands. here republican colleagues called her actions a, quote, insurrection. in response to the judge's ruling, representative zephyr tweeted, "despite all the cruelty, i believe people saw a glimpse of what our country can be if we stand up for democracy and for one another. i will be meeting with communities and lawmakers across the state and country to discuss how this moment becomes a movement if we stand together."

zooey zephyr joins us here. thank you for joining me. >> thank you for having me. >> i first have to ask if you and your girl friend are safe. >> yes, when the fake phone calls came in, law enforcement instead of calling s.w.a.t. called us. and that was that. >> we followed what your colleagues are responding to but just tell us what -- they have a majority in terms of making policy. there's really no chance they're going to be overruled. is it simply your voice in advocating against their policies that that led to the censure? can you tell us your story? >> yeah. we're seeing a growing extremism in the republican party, and that extremism isn't sufficient, isn't enough for them to get th

dissenting voice women saw that here in montana. we saw that in tennessee when lawmakers stood up in nebraska, in oklahoma. so they're demanding that we not be able to stand up and speak to the real harm that their bills, their policies or their inaction lead to, and when we do that, they're using the legislative tools at their disposal to silence or remove us from the legislative process. >> what do you think it is on the right that creates such energy or fervor to want to insert themselves in families' conversations or conversations between transyouth and their family or doctor. what is the political piece a this for republicans? >> you know, their effort around trans people currently is an echo of the attacks on the gay community in the '90s, and it's

an attempt to create a boogieman, to drum up fear within the most extreme elements of their base. and we know that this is an echo because we see the way in which the language mirrors, the way detransitioners are flown out across the country, much like the ex gays in the '90s, the way recruiting was used to slander the gay community. and now we're hearing harmful words like groomer being used. their attacks will fail much like the attacks on gay rights did in the '90s because we're part of your community. we're your friends, neighbors, and you're never far from a trans person or someone who cares deeply about us. >> what would you say to a coalition of allies that want to stand with the trans community but don't have all the facts? what can people do?

what can we do? >> so, the first thing you can do is if someone in your life is trans, listen. listen to them and understand that they -- if it feels like it was a light switch moment for you, trust that the trans person in your life has been sitting on this emotion for a long time, working through it slowly, and if they're going to access health care, they're going to be doing so carefully in consideration with their doctors, with therapists and psychologists. beyond that, go out, do the work, do the research in your community. look up information and stand up in your communities wherever you are on behalf of trans people. that would be my single hope. >> and you have drawn a national and i'm sure international community to not just your cause in the montana state legislature, but your advocacy. i invite you here any time you want to be part of these conversations. i really appreciate your time

today. >> grateful to be here as always. thank you. >> thank you. montana state representative zooey zephyr. quick break for us, we'll be right back. ick break for us, wee right back (vo) switch and choose the phone you want, like the incredible iphone 14, on us. (cecily) on the network worth bragging about. verizon liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. with the money we saved, we tried electric unicycles. i think i've got it! doggy-paddle! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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there's an update for you on that tragic shoot at a medical center in atlanta that killed one person and injured four others. the local hospital that treated the four injured reports that one of the victims is in surgery and the other left the operating room and is doing well. the suspect was at the medical facility with his mom is still at large at this hour and multiple agencies from across the atlanta area are on the hunt. georgia's senator rafael warnock took to the floor of the senate to react to the news of the shooting in his hometown and made an impassioned plea for change. >> as a pastor i'm praying for those affected by this tragedy, but i hasten to say that thoughts and prayers are not enough.

and in fact -- in fact, it is a contradiction to say that you're thinking and praying and then do nothing. it is to make a mockery of prayer. >> wow. senator warnock will be on tonight with our friend and colleague joy reid right here on msnbc at 7:00 p.m. don't miss that. another break for us. we'll be right back. k for us we'll be right back.

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